Sounds like a stupid plan. The saving comes from reducing driver to and from hours.
It
is a stupid plan, at least for the ones in my building.
None of our local management people wanted to implement the satellite centers (my building has 3) but some idiot from IE or Corporate mandated them and now we are stuck with them.
The mileage that is "saved" by the satellite routes is merely transferred to the adjacent routes that are forced to break trace in order to haul the trailer out and back, or make service on the NDA packages that the driver with the trailer cannot get to by the commit time. Getting the trailer back to the building in time to process the volume at night is an ongoing logistical nightmare. It gets even worse when one or more of our hitch cars gets pulled for repairs, or when a driver in the affected loops puts in for an 8 hr gurantee. And when one of the satellite drivers is sick, takes an optional holiday or goes on vacation....his replacement gets paid for the time and mileage to drive from our building out to the center and back, meaning that the supposed "savings" of time and miles only apply for about 44 or 45 weeks out of the year anyway. Factor in the cost of renting a fenced-in parking area, the expense of maintaing the trailers and equipping the pkg cars with trailer hitches, the additional $.25 per hour paid to the driver who pulls the trailer, and the duplication of labor involved in handling the packages
twice (preload loads the trailer, the driver then loads his own car, and in the evening it is reversed) and we are
losing money on the damn things. But since getting rid of the satellites would first require an admission on someone's part that they were wrong, we are going to be stuck with them until whoever had the bright idea in the first place either retires or dies.